What’s up with Conservative peer Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, which opposes efforts to mitigate climate change? It has reportedly had to put off the creation of a new lobbying arm in response to pressure from the Charity Commission about its campaign tactics.

It’s the latest twist in a rumbling row over its status. The foundation was registered in early 2009 as an educational charity and company, but its official launch was delayed until November that year, when it was able to exploit the release onto the web of e-mails that had been hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. These were used by climate change sceptics to try to undermine researchers.

What will the partial loss of charitable status mean for Lawson’s group? For starters, it has allowed the foundation’s funders to collect tax relief on donations. However, it’s unlikely to change its intention to keep the identity of its funders secret, although UK newspaper The Guardianrevealed that they include the billionaire Michael Hintze, a former donor to the Conservative party.

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As a result of all this, the foundation announced earlier this year that it was planning to establish the Global Warming Policy Forum in July, which will not be covered by charity regulations and so will be able to continue the campaign against UK and European Union policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This has now been delayed until September.

Under scrutiny

The move to create a lobbying arm is a response to scrutiny by the Charity Commission, which regulates UK charities, of the foundation’s compliance with its rules. These state that “political activity can only be in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes” and that use of emotive “material must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base”.

In June 2013, I raised concerns with the commission about whether the foundation was complying, because it was giving out information about climate change that was inaccurate and misleading.

The response from the commission has been painfully slow, consisting primarily of an extended “dialogue” with the trustees of the foundation. However, during this period, none of its activities that breach the guidelines has been curtailed. For instance, in February, Lawson was interviewed on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, during which he made a number of erroneous claims about the science of climate change. The BBC later admitted that the interview breached editorial guidelines on accuracy in news programmes.

In disguise

Although I have attempted to remain in contact with the commission since, I have received very little information, and I did not learn about the foundation’s plan to launch a lobbying arm until it issued a press release in May. The commission later told me that this means the foundation will have to distinguish on its website between material produced by the charitable arm, which will be covered by the requirement for accuracy, and its political lobbying, which will not.

I remain sceptical that this is enough to safeguard the public from inaccurate and misleading information being put out under the guise of charitable activities.

I have appealed to the commission about the slow and ineffective action it has taken. The backdrop to this is a December 2013 report from the National Audit Office that was highly critical of it, concluding that it is “not regulating charities effectively”.

As long as the commission continues to dither, there remains a serious risk that journalists, politicians and the public will continue to be misled about the veracity of the foundation’s claims about climate change.